Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Republicans On The Run

The state Democratic Party, much wealthier than the state Republican
Party, is now spending some of its dollars on imported gunslingers such as
James Hallinan, a political hessian hired by party central to throw mud at
Republican candidates for governor, a certain sign that the election season is
upon us. Democrats in Connecticut hold
all the state’s constitutional offices, have veto proof majorities in the
General Assembly, and presently have in their campaign coffers 14 times more
cash than Republicans.

Some of the mudslinging has backfired. Even a few liberal commentators
have winced at the slops that regularly cross their news desks but, as
Cardinal John Henry Newman once said, “Throw enough mud and some will stick –
stick but not stain.”

Governor Dannel Malloy’s low rating in the polls, some commentators have
noted, may give Republicans an opportunity to win back the governorship, last
held by Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy’s polar opposite. Mr. Malloy is a pro-union, left
of center politician; Mrs. Rell, a creature of the legislature, was a moderate
Republican of a kind that once held office in most of New England, the land
that conservatism forgot. Barry Goldwater, the Will Rogers of the modern
conservative movement, used to say, “If you cut off New England and California,
you’ve got a pretty good country.”

For reasons not yet explored by any of New England’s major research
institutions, the moderate Republican in New England has become something of a
vanishing species. In Connecticut, the species is as extinct as the Dodo bird.
All the members of Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation are left of center
progressives, some more brash than others. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy shouts his
progressivism from the rooftops, but then he is likely to moderate his tone
when he next faces voters in three years. U.S. Representative Jim Himes is more
discreet; he travels among progressives with his ideology tucked into the
breast pocket of his expensive looking suit. Hip U.S. Representative Rosa
DeLauro is fearless, as anyone would be in a district that has not elected a Republican
to the U.S. House in more than 30 years; ditto U.S. Representative John Larson
of the gerrymandered 1st District, last held by a Republican nearly 60 years
ago.

Whatever may be ailing the Republican Party in Connecticut, its losses
cannot be attributed to conservative incumbents. There are none, though there
is little doubt that Democrats running for office in 2014 will be banging the
drums loudly against fictitious conservative threats and Tea Party “extremists,”
northern Republicans clinging desperately to their guns, their wallets and
their bibles – that sort of thing. The 2014 Democratic campaign script, however
fantastic its claims, has already been written, much of it in Washington D.C.
and Chicago, where President Barack Obama’s former campaign script writers hold
court. Chicago is the murder capital of the United States, and the Democratic
Party War Room in Washington D.C. is party central for propaganda that will be
picked up by state parties.

Political reality in Connecticut is quite different than in other parts
of the country. Here in the land of steady progressive habits, the Democratic
Party has almost completely routed Republicans, especially in large, one-party
cities such as New Haven, which this year had the distinction of electing as
mayor a Democratic Party fixture whose husband, now diseased, was the top tax
scofflaw in the city over which his wife, Toni Harp, now presides.

Speeding her plow in a Democratic primary were the usual notables:
Governor Dannel Malloy, author of the largest tax increase in Connecticut
history, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years a crusading
Attorney General who, in his former position, used to scowl fiercely at folk
who avoided paying their fair share of taxes, and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy,
the National Rifle Association’s bête noir.

In one party states, politicians working the media get to choose not
only their friends but their enemies as well – and never mind that the “enemy” is
largely a Potemkin Village fiction. The Tea Party in Connecticut presents a
greater threat to RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) than to progressive
Democrats. And for this reason, they can be safely attacked by incumbent
Democrats who never met a constitutional bulwark they could not leap over.
Economic conservatives among Republican campaigners become poorer than
Democrats in direct proportion to their defense of rational budgets, spending
cuts and appeals to the self-interests of entrepreneurial wealth producers. This
is an arc that has been visible over skies in Connecticut for more than 50
years.

Is it not a wonder that only a handful of reporters, editors and
commentators in the state have noticed the debt pots at each end of the
progressive rainbow? When, at the end of the downward plunge, Connecticut inevitably
becomes the Venezuela of New England – Crumbling Venezuela was once considered
the Paris of Latin America, but not even Paris is Paris anymore – those rooted
in the rubble may well ask the tribunes of the people, “Why did you not warn us
of the impending disaster?”